Everything in Its Path

by Kai Theodor Erikson

Book Overview

The 1977 Sorokin Award-winning story of Buffalo Creek in the aftermath of a devastating flood.

On February 26, 1972, 132-million gallons of debris-filled muddy water burst through a makeshift mining-company dam and roared through Buffalo Creek, a narrow mountain hollow in West Virginia. Following the flood, survivors from a previously tightly knit community were crowded into trailer homes with no concern for former neighborhoods. The result...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671240676
• ISBN13: 9780671240677
• Release Date: April 1978
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Wrecked lives

In the summer of 1948, we lived in Lorado, West Virginia (Logan County). The Buffalo Creek ran behind `our' house, while a road and the tracks of the C & O Railroad ran just beyond our front yard. The photo on page 37 shows those tracks that we often walked from Lorado towards Man, WV. It could well be a picture of our former front yard. I , of course, remember the news accounts of the 1972 disaster. So, I have a personal outlook at this sociological follow-up of the lives wrecked when the earth dam and mine tailings gave way. Kai Erickson has done a deeply moving and eloquent account of the ramifications of this recent tragedy. I recommend it to all interested in mankind and the factors that fall upon our fellow travelers as we all 'work our way through life.'

Everything changes Everything

This was a very intersting book for me. I was looking for information on this flood & I found the information plus more. I didn't really realize it was going to deal so much with "how the person works" in tragedies. I came to understand the Appalacian people as a unique group. I also understand how & why the flood started. But I also learned a lot about how people's "mind" deals with events such as this type of tragedy. And I also can understand how people in general, including myself, react to events in much smaller every-day problems. I can now understand many of my "reactions" & how they are normal & very unique to each individual. It helped me a lot Plus I learned a lot about the needless tragedy. It made me think a little. Good Read.

Essential reading for West Virginians

I was 12, growing up a couple of counties away, when the dam burst at Buffalo Creek in 1972. It was just the latest disaster in less than a decade to afflict what I thought was my cursed native state: The Silver Bridge collapse, the explosion at the Farmington No. 9 mine and the Marshall University plane crash. This book is in three parts, the first describing the disaster, the second a historical overview of Appalachia in general and the Buffalo Creek area in particular. The third is on the effects on the survivors of the flood. Though the Buffalo Creek flood happened more than 30 years ago, its lessons are as current as the destruction of New Orleans. Kai Erickson writes quite well for a sociologist and the book only begins to drag a bit at the end, in the sociology part. Maybe it's just the (justifiable) litany of complaints from the survivors. If this account is any measure, the survivors of Hurricane Katrina will be suffering in psyche long after their material losses have been recouped. Anyone with further interest in the Buffalo Creek flood ought to also read Gerald Stern's "The Buffalo Creek Disaster," written from the point of view of one of the lawyers who took part in the resulting litigation.

Sociology must

This was an excellent book, well-written and informative. Using Buffalo Creek as the fulcrum, Erikson provides readers with a good introduction of communities and trauma. It is interesting to note the similarities and differences between the aftermaths of Sept 11 and Buffalo Creek. Erikson's book is a must read for social scientists and anyone interested in creative non-fiction writing.

Excellent description of a tragic disaster in West Va.

Excellent descriptions of how survivors dealt with the total destruction of everything they had built and accomplished in their entire lives. All of this was taken from them by a "man made" damn and wall of water within minutes. Mr. Erikson did a wonderful job of relating to the people from the coal camps and realizing what their lives had been about......he truely shows the suffering involved in this disaster.